STRATEGY RETIRED PREFERRED AND STRIVE SOLD IT — SAME WEEK, OPPOSITE ENDS

Two bitcoin treasury companies filed 8-Ks on September 14. Both cover the same week. They made opposite trades in the same instrument.

Strategy spent $139.3 million buying back 1,420,467 shares of its own STRC preferred. Each of those shares owed $12 a year. Cancelling them removes $17.0 million a year of obligation, permanently. Strategy bought no bitcoin that week and sold none. The coin count did not move: 845,050.

Strive did the reverse. It issued 402,541 new shares of its SATA preferred. Each of those owes $13 a year. That is $5.2 million a year of new obligation on shares that never mature. With the money it bought 469 bitcoin at an average of $77,954, which took its holdings to exactly 25,000.

Put the two side by side in plain dollars.

Strategy spent $8.17 of cash for every dollar of yearly obligation it erased.

Strive took on one dollar of yearly obligation for every seven dollars of bitcoin it bought. Read it the other way and it is fourteen cents a year, at today's rate, for every dollar of bitcoin that went on the balance sheet.

The rates move, too. Both instruments are named variable rate, and both issuers set them period by period. Strive raised SATA a quarter point four times, from 12.00% to 13.00% on April 15, and has held it there since. Their latest rate announcements both say the rate was maintained, which is a word you only use about a number you set again each time.

Both preferreds are built around $100. That is what makes the arithmetic work: $12 a year is 12% of $100, and $13 a year is 13% of $100. A share sold at $100 raises $100 and owes $13 a year, and the cash buys bitcoin. Strategy paid $98.07 a share to buy its own back. One company is issuing them. The other is retiring them.

Neither one is wrong. They are different bets about what happens next. One company has decided its claims cost too much. The other has decided bitcoin is cheap enough to pay for with claims. Both filings hit the same morning.

At the time of this writing, bitcoin was $78,408 at 7:17 PM ET on Crypto.com.

Updated September 14, 11:39 PM ET. This story first said Strive's new obligation ran "forever," and that the fourteen-cent figure held forever. Both preferreds are named variable rate and both issuers reset them, so the obligation is perpetual but the rate is not. The word was removed in two places and the two paragraphs on the rates and on the $100 base were added.